Fabian Mejia

Authoring a Logical Entity This post is related to the second modding tutorial you can find [ here ]. This is a very important tutorial as it's a real introduction to Mod programming in Valve's Source, and if you understand it you will be able to do more complex stuff. Exploring this tutorial is not clear what is it purpose or how can you test it. That's the purpose of this post, make it clearer. Please note, there's not a single example of how can you use the entity or where it can be useful. I will help on that. Go through the tutorial and, when you have completed the Build process, go back to this post. I will just mention a couple of things may help you with this process. 1. Although there's no mention about that, it's good if you start with the mod you just created in previous tutorial. 2. the sdk_logicalentity file name can be any other, what really matters is the following line: LINK_ENTITY_TO_CLASS( my_logical_entity, CMyLogicalEntity ); Where you link ...

Intro Fortunately, you are not tied only to the development of plugins for Maya 3D using C++, which implies a good knowledge of programming, debugging, memory management, etc. Using Python has some advantages over C++: Multiplatform: Although C++ can run in multiple platforms, you have to fit the code to the machine and use different compilers and setting for each platform (although you use open source compilers). Anyway you have to recompile. There's no such in Python. It will work in every platform. Faster coding: Coding in Python is a way easier than C++. Few setup steps are required to develop applications in Python, and obviously, results will be seen faster. Nothing is perfect, so these are the disadvantages I can think of: Speed: Being a scripted language, Python is a lot slower than C++ (Compiled) Low Level Programming: If you need to make son low level operations, then C++ (and assembler calls) is the right option. For in-house development it's ok, but if I really want...

Client Side Now that we have setup the server side application and repository, clients (developers) should have access to repositories using a client tool. A useful tool for this purpose is the TortoiseSVN . It's a subversion client for windows. (Please note that subversion is the core of the Version Control Server). It support several protocols including http (the one we will use for VisualSVN Server ) and it's really easy to use. After you have downloaded and installed the application you will be surprised that there's no applications to run (rather than the diff and merge applications) to manage files. Instead, under the windows explorer you will find new options when you right-click on a file or folder (that's what it's called a shell extension ). The first step to setup your environment is by creating a directory where your files will be stored where you take them from the repository. Of course this folder can be the location of the sources after you created a...

My First Mod This guide complements My First Mod basic tutorial from the Valve's developer web page, so please, have booth pages opened. After you have downloaded and Installed the SDK, you should run the Game and .... just to make sure everything will run ok, restart the computer (Well, I had to do it because the Source SDK didn't start when I tried to run it) This is how Source SDK looks when you double click on the application. In order to continue with the tutorial, double click on the Create a Mod link under Utilities. It takes some time to create all Mod files (All source files required to rebuild the application). When finished, a folder src is created and, below it there's the Solution. Please open it according to the Visual Studio version you have. In my particular case, it's VS2005. Following screen shot illustrates the solution location, as well as the Rocket file location and line to be changed: You go through the steps in tutorial in order to compile cha...

When Software Projects become larger and more people is involved, there's need to keep control of source code files. Usually, several users have to make changes at the same time in a core file. Doing this the wrong way may lead to delete changes made by a developer, wasting a lot of time and raising errors in the coding. Fortunately , there's Version Control software which keeps track of who is using a file, keep versions of that files, allows merging, branching and other cool stuff to keep your software project synchronized . There are several vendors and open open source versions of this software, and a couple of models. Please check the List of Revision Control Software . In this case we are going to setup a Control software using a Client-Server model with an open source application. Server Side VisualSVN is our choice, because it's Open Source, provides an easy installation package and a clean control panel. Just download it from VisualSVN . After downloading, run th...